There was a small gathering at my friend’s house out in the suburbs. His family had gone on a trip to Whistler while we stayed at his place tripping. I hadn’t had anything to eat that day and the shrooms hit hard.

My trip started with auditory hallucinations.

I suddenly heard a thumping electronic base buzzing in the back of my head. It was probably my own heartbeat echoing in my ears. As the sound got louder and reached its climax, I heard a bloodcurdling scream coming from my friend’s kitchen. Doing a quick head count, I noticed that everyone that was in the house was present in the living room; who could have been in the kitchen?

While I was trying to figure out who was screaming, the voice from the kitchen started yelling for help, screaming:

“PLEASE I CUT MYSELF, PLEASE CALL 911!”

I realized it was the voice of my sister.

My body was paralyzed and I couldn’t move a muscle, only my eyes could move around in their dry sockets. I couldn’t even blink.

The screams grew faint but my heart was still beating frantically.

Then the visuals kicked in. While I was still paralyzed in my seat, the room started to spin and gradually turn a royal blue colour, as if someone had placed blue colour gels on all the lights and windows. Once the room had turned blue, the music in my head changed.

Instead of its rhythmic beat and electronic sound, it was robotic and it had a sort of bouncy underwater base to it with a high pitch frequency playing in the background. In the room walked in some half fish people: top half fish, lower half woman. They were in fish net stockings and knee high leather boots. In their hands they held oval mirrors as trays, and on them were glasses filled with absinthe. They distributed a glass to each of us with a sugar cube on top already dissolved.

Before I took a swig of the cup, I looked deep into the green liquid and saw myself reflected on its surface. My image looked back at me with hatred. His mouth was moving as if he was lecturing me, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying, only the music getting louder and louder. I was too scared to drink it, fearing that I would be erasing my physical existence if I were to swallow my reflection in the cup. I set my cup aside and looked up at the others.

It was then that I realized that everyone else in the room was experiencing the same trip, since they had all accepted the glasses of absinthe from the fish woman while bug eyed.

My one friend, after taking a sip of the absinthe, that may or may not have actually been real, started bashing his head into the wall. Over and over, and over again until the wall had a hole in it and his head was bleeding non-stop. He then took off his shoe and started swatting imaginary bugs around him while speaking in tongues.

We later covered this hole with a framed family photo; his parents thought it was a nice touch to the living room.

Eventually the whole room was filled with top-half animal women: half cobra, half deer, half wolf… You name it. One of the hybrid women came in the room with another round of absinthe and just as I built up the courage to grab another glass, I black out.

I later found out the shrooms were laced with PCP.